If you submitted an application for a place for your son or daughter for September this year, you may have been successful, however, if you weren't, there is an independent appeals process that may enable you to secure a place.

The best advice would be, in the first instance, to ensure that you respond to any request to include your son or daughter on the waiting list in the event that a place becomes available.

The second thing you can do is to submit an appeal. Separate appeals can be made against each rejection, however, parents can only do so on the grounds that admissions rules were not followed or that the decision was unreasonable.

The admission authority for the school – which will be the governors for academies and voluntary aided, foundation and free schools, but the local authority for community and voluntary controlled schools – are required to allow you at least 20 school days within which to lodge your appeal from the date of notification.

Be under no illusion that appeals deemed to be 'infant class size appeals' are extremely difficult to win. In fact, to describe them as appeals is, in itself, misleading.

In practice, the appeal is really no more than a review, because the independent appeal panel will be unable to take into consideration any fresh information that you may submit which was not available to the admission authority when it reached its original decision.

Places in Key Stage 1, which includes reception and years 1 and 2, are covered by what is known as Infant Class Size Legislation. What this means in practice is that, apart from a few limited exceptions, it is against the law for children to be taught in classes of more than 30, unless there is more than one schoolteacher present.

Unfortunately, if your preferred school is operating under Infant Class Size Legislation, there are only two grounds on which an appeal can be successful. One is where the admission authority made a mistake that led to a place being denied; and the second is where the panel is satisfied that the original decision was unreasonable.

Many parents, understandably, believe that a decision to refuse a place is unreasonable and present information that they believe validates this position. Unfortunately, what they are using is the dictionary definition of unreasonable, whereas the appeal panel is required to use the legal definition.

So what is the legal definition of unreasonable? It has been described as the following in the School Admission Appeals Code:

The panel will need to be satisfied that the decision to refuse to admit the child was "perverse in the light of the admission arrangements" i.e. it was "beyond the range of responses open to a reasonable decision maker" or "a decision which is so outrageous in its defiance of logic or of accepted moral standards that no sensible person who had applied his mind to the question could have arrived at it".

This, as you can see, is an extremely high threshold.

Therefore, in order to be successful with such an appeal, you really need to show that the admission authority made a mistake in dealing with your application. You will need to be able to demonstrate that the admission authority did not properly consider information provided with your application.

How is it decided that the appeal will be treated as an infant class size appeal? The simple rule of thumb is to look at the published admission number for the school. If it is 30, or a multiple of 30, then the chances are that it will not be difficult for the admission authority to convince an appeal panel that it should be deemed to be an infant class size appeal that will then limit the grounds on which an appeal can be successful.

However, if the published admission number is not 30, then it will depend on how the classes are organised. For example, an admission number of 45 may be deemed to be an infant class size appeal, if the year 1 and 2 classes are merged together to make three classes of 30 rather then 4 classes of 22/23.

I established School Appeals some 12 years ago to help parents who were uncertain as to how to prepare and present a compelling appeal. Despite the low national success rate for appeals in reception, you can still succesfully challenge Infant Class Size appeals.

What is the overall likely success rate? According to the most recently published figures, approximately 15 per cent of appeals are successful. However, in the light of changes in the decision making procedures, introduced since those figures were published, a success rate of below 10 per cent may, unfortunately, now be nearer the mark.